Frequently Asked Questions
Does Cacheman work with Windows NT4/2000?
Do you have Cacheman for Windows NT4/2000 in your plans?
Can I distribute Cacheman?
What is Disk Cache?
What's the problem with the Windows Disk Cache?
Does Windows 98/ME still have the Disk Cache problems?
What is Chunk Size?
What is Read-ahead Threshold?
What is Name and Path Cache?
What are GDI / User Resources?
Does Cacheman change the Virtual Memory size?
Does Cacheman have to be resident in memory to work?
Does Cacheman add drivers to optimize my Disk Cache?
Do I need to close all programs before running Cacheman?
Will Cacheman improve every system?
Is it dangerous to use Cacheman?
I had problems loading Cacheman 3.80 on my system - does this problem still exist with V4.x?
Does Cacheman work with Windows NT4/2000?
Cacheman is designed for Windows 95/98/ME. The settings page is not available on Windows NT4/2000 - you can use Cacheman only to monitor Free Physical memory and Virtual Memory Usage on these systems.
Do you have Cacheman for Windows NT4/2000 in your plans?
Not at the moment.
Can I distribute Cacheman?
Please email us at distribution@outertech.com first.
What is Disk Cache?
Disk Cache is a part of RAM that acts as an intermediate buffer when data is read from and written to file systems on secondary storage devices.
The Disk Cache driver stores the most recently accessed data in RAM. When a program needs to access new data, the operating system first checks to see if the data is in the cache before reading it from the disk. Because computers can access data from RAM much faster than from a storage device, disk caching can significantly increase performance.
What's the problem with the Windows Disk Cache?
There is no problem with the Disk Cache by itself, but Windows can often gobble up 60% (in few cases even 80%) of your installed memory for the Cache. It does not hurt if you still have enough free RAM, but should this be not the case - Windows will very probably increase the usage of Virtual Memory (Swap File on your Hard Drive) instead of decreasing the Disk Cache by a significant amount. Using Virtual Memory is extremely slow compared to RAM access. In this situation the advantages of a large Disk Cache are simply gone and your system will significantly slow down.
This is not the only Disk Cache problem. There is a good change that Windows 9x/ME will not be able to work correctly on a system with more than 512MB of memory. The cause is a too large Cache that consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as creating a new virtual machine. Cacheman cures also this problem!
Does Windows 98/ME still have the Disk Cache problems?
Windows has changed it's Disk Cache strategy with the introduction of Windows 98. Applications can be executed directly in the Disk Cache instead of loading them into another memory area and launching there (as Windows 95 does). This is a great improvement, but there is still no limit on how large the cache can be. You will probably find reports that the Disk Cache problem is fixed in Win 98/ME because a too large Disk Cache is not wasted space anymore. From thousands of user reports we see that this is NOT the case. The Disk Cache can still raise to such an amount that virtual memory swapping becomes not a occasional but a permanent activity even on systems with large memory amount and disabled PageFile Call Async Manager. Limiting the Disk Cache size has reduced the swapping in many cases.
What is Chunk Size?
The Disk Cache is a single block of memory which is divided into chunks. The performance changes slightly with the Chunk Size. Is it too small, the data must occupy too many chunks and vice versa. An optimum size must be arrived at so that the Chunk Size is not too large and not too small. The default size of 512 Bytes is best for most purposes.
What is Read-ahead Threshold?
Read-ahead Threshold is the amount of additional bytes that will be read when a application reads data in sequence. It is meant to improve read performance by anticipating the next read. This works in many cases, unfortunately the performance will decrease if more than one application accesses the hard drive at the same time.
What is Name and Path Cache?
Path Cache specifies the size of the cache that the virtual file allocation table (VFAT) can use to save the locations of the most recently accessed directory paths. This cache improves performance by reducing the number of times the file system must seek paths by searching the file allocation table. Name Cache stores the locations of the most recently accessed file names.
What are GDI / User Resources?
System resources are areas of memory that are used by the input manager (USER) and the graphic display interface manager (GDI) for keeping track of all of the windows that are open in a session and for drawing objects on the screen. The size of each heap is fixed.
16-bit User heap (64K)
32-bit User window heap (2MB)
32-bit User menu heap (2MB)
16-bit GDI heap (64K)
32-bit GDI heap (2MB)
If any of these segments becomes full, programs may fail to load and Windows 9x/ME may become unstable - regardless of how much other free memory there is.
Does Cacheman change the Virtual Memory size?
No.
Does Cacheman have to be resident in memory to work?
No. Cacheman must not be present all the time in memory for the optimization purpose - it's only needed for the monitoring capabilities. Disable the 2 checkboxes on the Options Page if you do not want to use the monitoring functions. If you leave the options enabled Cacheman will start automatically on the next windows boot and hide into the system tray. The tray icon will display the free memory amount in MB, to configure the display go to the Options page. To show Cacheman's main window double click on the tray icon or select Hide/Unhide from the tray shortcut menu.
Does Cacheman add drivers to optimize my Disk Cache?
No.
Do I need to close all programs before running Cacheman?
Nope. Cacheman does not really interact with any other programs, and uses very little in the way of resources and CPU time.
Will Cacheman improve every system?
No. Cacheman is not a magic utility. Many Cacheman users have achieved great performance and/or system reaction time improvement, some even reported their system behaves after using Cacheman like after an expensive Hardware upgrade. You can read some user comments in this section of the help file. We have got of course reports where Cacheman was not able to help too, simply try yourself and decide.
Is it dangerous to use Cacheman?
Cacheman works on a large number of systems without any problems. We have received a few problem reports from users with exotic device drivers. (mostly network adapters). Use Cacheman at your own risk as stated in the license agreement of the installation program!
If you encounter any problems - read this section how to get rid of Cacheman.
I had problems loading Cacheman 3.80 on my system - does this problem still exist with V4.x?
Cacheman 3.80 executable was compressed. This worked without problems and reduced the executable size by a significant amount. The loading problem that occurred was NOT caused by Cacheman, but by a new version of Symantec Norton Antivirus software. Cacheman 4.x is not compressed anymore, but since NAV was the only AV software that caused problems with compressed executable files we do not recommend to use it at all. There are a lot of good AV software which work without problems, use less resources and offer better AV protection at the same time.